Major language groups

In tracing our origins, various disciplines provide different insights. Language, genes and culture are three distinct and, in principle, independent entities which demonstrate different spread patterns in space and time. There are two cate-gories of information in the universe, first is genetic information what we know as nature, and second is the extra-genetic information, what we call culture. The spread of language or any other cultural element can occur together with total replacement of genes (demic diffusion) or without (cultural diffusion) any exchange of genetic material between the human groups that interact with each other. The models of demic and cultural diffusion can be considered as two extremes whereas in reality the spread of any cultural element may be accompanied by some but not total exchange of genes. The reconstruction of the past is further complicated by the fact that in time many languages and cultures have become extinct, e.g. the Hittite language which forms one of the most basic branch of the Indo-European language tree. Human genetic diversity observed in South Asia, as it is discussed below, is second only to that of Africa. High region specific genetic diversity implies an early settlement and demographic growth in South Asia after the African exodus of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in Late Pleistocene. In contrary, linguistic diversity in India has been thought to derive itself from more recent population movements and episodes of contact (Diamond and Bellwood, 2003). With the exception of Dravidian, which has likely local origins in India (Fuller, 2003), the presence of other language families (Indo-European, Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman) in India is likely due to recent introgression.

The Indo-European language tree has Hittite, Tocharian, Armenian, and Greek as its most basic branches (Gray and Atkinson, 2003). This branching pattern supports the model of Anatolian origins this language family (Gimbutas, 1970; Mallory, 1989; Renfrew and Boyle, 2000; Gray and Atkinson, 2003). The Indo-Iranian branch of this tree has been dated at 4,600 years whereas all Indian languages in this group coalesce to a common ancestral language at a time depth of only 2,900 years assuming a fairly constant rate of language evolution (Gray and Atkinson, 2003). Dravidians are restricted to South India with some exceptions like Kurukh, Gondi and Malto branches in Central, Eastern India-Nepal and Brahui in Pakistan. The Sino-Tibetan speakers are dispersed through-out the Himalayan belt and mainly concentrated in the Northeastern parts of India. The Austroasiatic people are mainly dispersed in “heartland” of India i.e.

central and eastern parts. In all, 676 language groups have been identified in South Asia (Ethnologue). A detailed view of different language groups in South Asia has been illustrated in fig.4.

Figure 4. Geographical distribution of different language groups in South Asia (modi-fied from Van Driem 2001)

It was not only the lexical comparison but evaluation of whole languages as organic systems of grammatical regularities, which allowed Marcus van Box-horn in 1643 to recognize the Indo-European language family. Indo-European is world’s largest language family in terms of number of speakers. The name indicates the range of its expansion from Indian subcontinent to Europe. For the first time it was noted by Sir William Jones, who was a judge in Presidency of Bengal and one of the founders of Asiatic Society in Calcutta and he had proclaimed that Sanskrit was related to Greek and Latin. Though, it was not him who discovered it first, but this announcement made him immortal in the linguistic history (for a full story see van Driem, 2001). About half a century later this work was catalyzed by another distinguished orientalist Max Muller, who postulated the “Aryan Invasion theory” which has been one of the most controversial South Asian topics for over a century. However, it should be noted that it still remains just as a theory. To date, no strong archaeological or genetic evidence has proven the Aryan invasion theory to be a fact (Endicott et al., 2007 and references therein). The Indo-European family tree is split into major branches viz. Anatolian, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Tocharian, Indo-Iranian, Italo-Celtic, Balto-Slavic and Germanic (van Driem, 2001). Notably, Armenian represents a distinct branch of this family and is spoken in northeast Asia Minor and south of the Caucasus (Renfrew, 1991). It’s closest living relative within the family is probably the geographically distant Albanian language (van Driem, 2001). Many hypotheses have been proposed on the origin and dispersal of this language but so far none is widely accepted.

Few studies point homeland of Indo European language in the Pontic-Caspian region i.e above the Black and Pontic-Caspian Seas, which today forms southern Russia and southern Ukraine (Gimbutas, 1970). Alternate view argues that Anatolia (what is today central and south-eastern Turkey) is the cradle of Indo-Europeans and the point of their dispersal to their historical habitats (Renfrew, 1996; Renfrew, 2000). This view presumes that the Hittites and other people who spoke related languages (Luvian, Pallaic) are autochthonous. Histo-rians, archaeologists and expert Hittitologists disagree and regard the Hittites intrusive to Anatolia (Gurney, 1990; Dunstan, 1998; Puhvel, 2004). The Ana-tolian languages Hittite, Luvian and Palaic are recorded in cuneiform writing on over 25000 clay tablets dating to the period between 1650 and 1200 BC (van Driem, 2001). Some of the views based one early Rigvedic hymns place Sapta-sindhu region as a cradle of this language group (Kazanas, 1999; Feuerstein et al., 2001). The common model of Indo-European speakers in South Asia explains their entry from the northwestern part and their rapid expansion into the subcontinent assimilating large number of Munda and Dravidian languages.

The spread of this family has also been associated with domestication of horse by 4500 BC as well as by invention of spoked wheels adopted and associated with the ancient Indo-European pastoralists to enhance their mobility,which enabled them to exploit the open steppe and facilitate their expansion through-out Eurasia (Gadgil, 1997; Witzel, 2005). However, archeological evidence points out that there is no evidence of horses antedating, 2000 BC in Indian

archaeological records (Parpola, 1988). Moreover, the recent extensive genetic studies (see in later chapter) dealing with haploid markers (mtDNA and Y-chromosome) doesn’t support this theory (Kivisild et al., 1999a,b, 2003a;

Metspalu et al., 2004; Sengupta et al., 2006; Endicott et al., 2007; Ref. II).

Dravidian languages were first recognized as an independent family in year 1816 by Francis Ellis. In 1856, the Dravidian scholar Robert Caldwell proposed a relationship between the Dravidian languages and the language of then freshly deciphered from Elamite inscriptions at Behistun and also gave the name Dravida to this language family. Dravidian scholar David McAlpin (McAlpin, 1981) analyzed large amount of data and provided the evidence in support of the Elamo-Dravidian theory. His language reconstruction suggested that proto-Dravidian speakers migrated to Indus Valley and Indian subcontinent from Near East with the farming dispersal (Cavalli-Sforza, 1996; Renfrew, 1996). This hypothesis was supported by many linguistic, archaeological and genetic studies (Cavalli-Sforza et al., 1994; Diamond and Bellwood, 2003; Quintana-Murci et al., 2001,2004; McElreavey and Quintana-Murci, 2005). However, the presence of North Dravidian group (i.e. Brahui) in Pakistan has raised a question against this theory. This putative relation was criticized on the basis of lexical affinities which were supposed to be borrowed from each other (Blazek and Boisson, 1992; Blazek, 1999). Well argued archaeobotanical evidence against Elamite link was put forward by Fuller (2003) suggesting indigenous origin of Dra-vidian language and Brahui as a westward expansion of this family. The bidirectional movements of Dravidians were proposed from their homeland (i.e.

South India) – Eastward migration towards East of India and Nepal (presently represented by Kurukh and Malto branches), and another ‘Out-of-India’

migration associated with animal herding and wild food processing, through Saurashtra (Gujarat) or Rajasthan (represented by Brahui population in Balo-chistan). This view has also been supported by recent Y-chromosomal study (Sengupta et al., 2006).

In South Asia, Sino-Tibetan language family is unambiguously considered to be arrived from East and is mainly present in Nepal, Bhutan and Northeastern part of India and also in Pakistan where the Balti population from the Karakoram Mountains also speaks a Tibeto-Burman branch (Fig. 4). This is the second largest language family in the world after Indo-European. The Sino-Tibetan language originated in China and spread from the Yellow river of China into Burma and the greater Himalayan region (van Driem, 2001). The over-whelming majority of languages spoken in the greater Himalayan region belong to this language family. Though, the greater Himalayan region also comprises of at least six other language families, i.e. Indo-European, Dravidian, Austro-asiatic, Altaic and the distinct language isolates represented by the ethno-linguistic relict groups Kusunda and Burushaski (van Driem, 2001). The internal classification of Sino-Tibetan is still controversial (Blench, 2008) and needs a thorough vocabulary and lexical reconstruction. Genetic studies on limited populations of this group however, suggest their recent migration from

East to Indian subcontinent (Cordaux et al., 2004b; Metspalu et al., 2004;

Reddy et al., 2007).

The study of lexicon as well as grammar enabled Francis Mason in 1854 to study the relationship between the Munda of India and the Mon-Khmer languages of Southeast Asia, to evaluate their relationship and also differentiate them from Sino-Tibetans, and propose the Austroasiatic language family. There are more than 150 Austroasiatic groups scattered all over ranging from the heartland of the Indian subcontinent to Vietnam in the East and the Malay Peninsula in the South. In South Asia distribution of Munda languages is patchy (see Fig. 4). The tangled origin of this language group has been discussed in the subsequent chapter. It was proposed that Munda has undergone changes in their word order and also share some linguistic features with Dravidian and Indo-European families, which point to its long-term bilingualism with non Austro-asiatic languages (Blench, 2008).